Images around Cusco

19 Nov 2019

We’ve started our Spanish classes and are finding that we have a lot less time to wander – we’re in class for 4 hours and homework, la tarea, is taking another 2+ hours of our afternoons. So, between homework, cooking, napping and wandering off to the supermercado for groceries, our days are full. The downside of this is that we’re going to be doing most of our exploring on the weekends for a while.

We did get out for some exploring last weekend and I had a chance to take a few photos. Here are few sights from around the city from last weekend.

One of the neighborhoods near us has a mix of construction including newer poured reinforced concrete but there is also a lot of old adobe used in the construction of some of the garden walls and house walls. I really liked this old weathered wood door and lintel in an adobe wall. I’ve seen a few of these throughout the neighborhoods.

There are also a number of stuccoed adobe and stone houses like these looking over the city. This is not a very affluent part of town, largely a poorer area, yet the views from the hillside are spectacular!

Throughout the hillside neighborhoods of Cusco we’re finding that there are stairs that allow pedestrian traffic to go straight up the hills while the roads switchback and wind their way up. Some of the stairs are just steep and painful but some, like this one, are steep, painful and very pretty too.

On Sunday we took a bus from our apartment to the Centro Histórico. It was crazy busy down there but we had some good people-watching and we visited a few of the big markets. We stuffed our backpacks with produce at el Mercado San Pedro. The markets, while different in certain ways, reminded us of the markets in France that we’ve missed so much. We will get back and get some market photos later but here are a few shots around el centro. Though it’s a journey with some walking and busing to get there, we’ll do vegetable shopping at San Pedro this coming weekend.

We found a winter squash in the market called zapallo. They are huge and probably weigh over 50 pounds each. The vendor cuts out a hunk as big as you want and we bought a kilogram. I made enough of a fabulous soup with the squash that we were able to have it for a couple dinners. We’ll be back for more!

Some of the Andean women really do dress as colorfully as the photos that we’ve seen for most of our lives. The women on the left has a small stand selling trinkets on the street. The woman on the right was sitting in the Plaza de Armas, with her two children, one of whom was bundled up, just apparently enjoying the day.

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And finally, a shot through the street towards one of the many cathedrals in the Centro Histórico. I don’t know if it’s this busy every Sunday but between people and cars it was very busy when we were there. There’s quite a difference between our quiet neighborhood and the center.

We did walk into one of the cathedrals to look and it was quite ornate. It didn’t have the elegance of the cathedrals in France but it did sparkle. As we have time, we’re looking forward to exploring them more.